– CBS World News Roundup – October 16, 1986 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
News for this October 16th in 1986 was hopeful at the outset, troubling in perspective.
The hopeful part came as feelers for the upcoming Summit conference in Reykjavik, Iceland sounded more and more upbeat. Two days earlier in London, chief Soviet Arms Negotiator Viktor Karpov said an agreement to eliminate intermediate range Nuclear missiles in Europe could be reached independent of strategic missiles and space talks. However, Karpov was contradicted on this day by Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov who told reporters the Kremlin was approaching Arms control as a package and will not a sign a Euro-missile agreement without an agreement first on the more difficult issues. Other rumors surfaced that Mikhail Gorbachev would still like to come to Washington for a Springtime Summit, providing agreements are reached on offensive and defensive weapons. The rumor continued, saying Gorbachev might be willing to allow some testing of Star Wars technology outside the laboratory.
The troubling part came in the form of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who suggested a major step-up being considered in U.S. support for Afghan rebels based in Pakistan. Weinberger spoke of possible installation of an Early Warning System against Soviet War planes chasing guerrillas across the border. He also didn’t rule out the use of AWACS Radar planes. Weinberger continued by saying new Soviet Troop withdrawals were having little effect on the war.
The PLO took credit for an attack staged at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which killed one and injured 69. Police rounded up 29 suspects. It was the first time the PLO staged an attack directly on Israeli Army soldiers and the worst attack on Israelis since 1984, when a bomb ripped through a bus, killing 6 people.
And the first Black African Writer won the 1986 Nobel Prize For Literature. Nigerian Wole Soyinka was awarded the Prize by the Nobel Committee, as they put it: “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence”.
And that’s a small slice of what happened on this October 16th in 1986 – as presented by The CBS World News Roundup.
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